April 30th, 2017 vs. Yomiuri

Rookie Hoshi gave up a couple runs in his first outing as a starter, but his quality start plus some decent bat support led the Swallows to victory in the so-called Tokyo Series.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

R

H

E

Giants

0

0

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

2

8

0

Swallows

1

0

0

0

0

1

1

0

0

3

5

3

W: Lueke (1-2)L: Ikeda (0-1)S: Akiyoshi (3-0 4S)

Giants

Swallows

1

Soichiro Tateoka (CF)

1

Tomotaka Sakaguchi (CF)

2

Itaru Hashimoto (LF)

2

Keiji Obiki (SS)

3

Hayato Sakamoto (SS)

3

Tetsuto Yamada (2B)

4

Shinnosuke Abe (1B)

4

Wladimir Balentien (LF)

5

Casey McGehee (3B)

5

Yuhei (Takai) (RF)

6

Shingo Ishikawa (LF)

6

Atsushi Ugumori (1B)

7

Daisuke Nakai (2B)

7

Yuhei Nakamura (C)

8

Seiji Kobayashi (C)

8

Ryota Yachi (3B)

9

Tetsuya Utsumi (P)

9

Tomoya Hoshi (P)

The scoring:

Bottom of the first:

Sakuguchi gets walked, then Obiki hits one to left to put runners on the corners. Yamada hits a grounder to the pitcher, who throws the ball home. Balentien follows up with a grounder of his own, which is enough to get Obiki home. 1-0 Swallows.

Nakai hits a double to right and Kobayashi follows it with one to left. 1-2 Gomi.

Bottom of the sixth:

Utsumi walks Obiki and Yamada, then Balentien swats one to left to tie it up 2-2.

Bottom of the seventh:

After Nakamura gets walked, Yachi sac bunts to get him to second. Takeuchi hits to right to put men on the corners. Sakaguchi then comes to bat and get an infield single that can only be described as “weird.” Our own Kozo describes it like this:

“Sakaguchi bounces a grounder to the second baseman (Nakai) who was playing in. Nakai fakes a throw to home, tries to tag the runner heading to second with an empty glove before throwing to first.”

As a result of Nakai’s brain fart, the Swallows find themselves up by a run, where they stay the rest of the night. 3-2 final.

Game notes:

In his first turn as starter, Hoshi pitched 6 innings, giving up 5 hits, 2 runs and striking out 4. Not a bad day of work for the 23-year-old draftee.